natsemi network card on WRAP

Well, I got the NatSemi network card working on the WRAP board after a lot of confusing tries!

First of all, I had to uncomment the lines for "crc32" and "natsemi" to load the modules at start up - which I forgot to do.

Once I did that, I got some "unresolved symbol" error messages. A post to the LEAF mailing list revealed that I might have different versions of the kernel and modules - which was the case! I had downloaded the latest version of kernel and modules, but used an older version of the WRAP-specific kernel ... which is where the problem was.

I then updated the WRAP board to use the same versions of the kernel and modules, and it worked!

Not only did the natsemi driver work, but I also got the 7DS multicast network working today! It didn't work last week (CRF told me the systems I was using were behind "different switches") but they sure do work now.

WRAP, wireless cards and LEAF

Now that 7DS runs on LEAF/WRAP, I need to figure out how the wireless card on WRAP works.

First off, the boot up screen for Bering does not show that a wireless card has been detected.

PCI: Device 00:95 not found by BIOS

Bad news? :(

After taking a close look at the miniPCI board on the WRAP board, I made out the words "SL-2511MP PLUS 2.10". A Google search reveals that it is a Senao 802.11b wireless card.

Well, I should have known this because it on the purchase invoice, but I like to do things the hard way. :(

How do we get LEAF to recognize this?

A few more hours on Google leads me to dozens of discussions on mailing lists, madwifi, hostap and Jean Tourrilhes's Linux Wireless page - which don't help me very much, because Senao is not mentioned anywhere.

But I have gotten some idea now of how wireless works on Linux.

The Senao website itself is not helpful. :(

A few more hours on Google lead to this excellent introduction to the Senao wireless cards by SeattleWireless - I learn that the Senao card is built around the Prism 2 chipset. They also say the HostAP drivers work.

Well, that's something that should get me started on getting the wireless card working...

And neat - I just found some detailed documentation of setting up a wireless card based on the Prism wireless card at skippy.net!

Made glibc 2.3 lrp package

I threw in the towel with uCLibc and created a glibc 2.3.2 LRP package. I also created LRP packages for libm and libpthread that are glibc based.

And hey - 7DS works on LEAF Bering-uCLibc/WRAP now! (Will try to add screenshots soon.)

The reason I decided not to use uCLibc was because:

1. I couldn't run it on the Linux box I was building under because I am not root - so no /lib/ld-uclibc.x.x (wonder why the links are hardcoded)
2. When I finally managed to transfer a uCLibc-compiled version of a simple program to the WRAP board, two things happened:
1. First, it complained that libgcc_x.so.1 was missing.
2. After I manually copied that library file, my program gave segmentation faults that I couldn't fix, because LEAF has no debugger.

So I went back and created my own glibc 2.3 LRP packages. I referred to the files that were in the glibc 2.2.5 package and created one - and it worked!

Compiling with uCLibc (and) CS MICE

I downloaded ucLibc's toolchain (apparently, you have to build a whole new toolchain called "buildroot" to compile programs with uClibc, but that wasn't too hard.)

Then I built it and compiled a simple program ... and the compile worked. Yay!

But the program wouldn't run because it was looking for /lib/ld-uclibc.x.x - which I couldn't install because I am not root. :(

There was something in uCLibc documentation about the paths being hardcoded, wonder why.

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Also, met with CU-CS webmaster Ben today - talked to him about how to use the MICE system. I will be hacking some PHP scripts to see if I can read data from MICE.

Eventually, this should develop into a Mambo component that can be plugged into the new Mambo version of the IRT website.

7DS on WRAP: ucLibc

My persistent efforts in making 7DS run on the LEAF/WRAP board hit a dead end last week.

The reason was that the latest glibc LRP package they have is 2.2.5 ... but my build requires 2.3!

I thought of creating an LRP package of glibc 2.3, but that may turn out to be a monster library!

My professor suggested last week that I reconsider and see if I can instead compile 7DS with ucLibc to get it running on WRAP, so I am taking a look at that...